Sunday, November 10, 2013

Do Republicans really care about reducing the deficit? (Jonathan Chait)

The Republican Party has gone on so long waxing hysterical about the debt while refusing any compromise at all to reduce it — even a 10-to-1 ratio of spending cuts to taxes — that the hypocrisy no longer even registers. It's simply a fixed element in the political landscape.

His brief treatment of this subject would be difficult to improve upon, so I won't try. See below.

(And is there anyone out there who didn't catch the reference to Meatloaf?)

The Republican Party has gone on so long waxing hysterical about the debt while refusing any compromise at all to reduce it — even a 10-to-1 ratio of spending cuts to taxes — that the hypocrisy no longer even registers. It's simply a fixed element in the political landscape.

Thus, a news story like this one from the Wall Street Journal can report straightforwardly that Republican Rep. Doug Collins "believes Congress should do everything in its power to tackle deficits."

Really? Everything?

No, it turns out. Four sentences later, the story adds as an aside: "That said, he rejects any talk of offsetting the cuts with new tax revenue."

Oh, so Collins thinks Congress should do "everything in its power" to reduce the gap between revenue and outlay, except increase revenue. So, really, of the two things Congress has in its power to reduce the deficit, he wants to do one of them. And he's only willing to do that one thing as long is there is absolutely nothing done about the other thing.

About Me

Jeff Weintraub is a social & political theorist, political sociologist, and democratic socialist who has been teaching most recently at the University of Pennsylvania, Bryn Mawr College, and the New School for Social Research, He was a Visiting Scholar at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University in 2015-2016 and a Research Associate at the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research, Bryn Mawr College.
(Also an Affiliated Professor with the University of Haifa in Israel & an opponent of academic blacklists.)